


Two Worlds Apart

by telltaleyarnspinner



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Arlathan, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post Trespasser, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Solavellan, What-If, solasmance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-02-09 02:51:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12878622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telltaleyarnspinner/pseuds/telltaleyarnspinner
Summary: A post Trespasser piece of fanfiction that follows the former Inquisitor Lavellan as she tries to beseech the heart of the Dread Wolf into giving into what he truly desires and simultaneously prevent the end of the world, again! While also exploring the idea of Lavellan having to deal with the loss of a limb as well as the Inquisition and all its members she once considered a part of her 'clan'.





	1. Premise

Two Worlds Apart

Premise:  
Scout Armala entered the study with the intention of delivering a missive from the spies in Tevinter to her commander. Yet, upon entering and noticing the derelict nature befallen to the large library, she decided to place the scroll on his desk instead. The beautifully carved piece of wood was covered in stains from ink, paint, candle wax and a few scorch marks. It was filled with clutter from poorly kept stationary and crumpled up reports. One piece of parchment, in particular, stood out from the rest, garnering the scout's full attention. A drawing of great detail of a spellbinding elf woman.

Her face was utterly captivating. Her lips upturned in a smile that reminded Armala of the sun; warm and bright. Her dark hair pencilled in delicate and clean with charcoal. It flowed in waves, rebellious and free, reminiscent of the sea. Her eyes were what struck out the most; soulful and young yet clouded with the slightest glimmer of sadness that made her look wise beyond her years. It may have simply been a drawing but it seemed to possess a life all its own. Intrigued, Armala decided to study the portrait further.

The parchment it was drawn on was handled with great care. There were no charcoal smudge marks or inward folded corners despite looking fairly well aged. Aged yet still preserved, perhaps is had been protected from the hardships of time by magic. The scout dared not touch it, no matter how much she yearned to, for fear the parchment would turn to ash in her hands. There was something oddly familiar about the woman in the portrait. After looking over the image with great intensity, she knew of whom this face belonged to. Armala felt embarrassed about her obvious oversight for nearly all Thedas knew of her. She was Dalish, like Armala, with a notable absence of a vallaslin. This was the face of the Dalish Inquisitor, Ilaan Revas of Clan Lavellan.

Armala tried to conceal her shock as she muttered an old Dalish curse into the night. Had the rumours been true? she wondered. And before she could stop herself from muttering that name, there was a sudden change in the weather. A flurry of defiant wind agitated the flame of a candle behind her, casting playful silhouettes around the room. To Armala's utter disbelief, the portrait disappeared. In the corner of her eye, she saw the outline of a man bathed in shadow. In recognition of whom the man was, fear shot up her spine. Frantically, Armala placed the missive on the desk. She took a bow and left the confines of the library. The library that grew colder and darker with each passing day under the current residence of the Great Wolf from legend.


	2. Through Mirrored Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Qunari Plot. A volatile Anchor and a graveyard filled with statues instead of headstones is the last place Revas expected to be reunited with her past lover, Solas.

Inquisitor Ilaan Revas stepped through the eluvian in hast. White hot light flashed bright, blinding her temporarily. The familiar pull of magic encompassed her whole body, its tendrils snaking its tendrils around her ushering her forward. She was transported instantly to a new location, she knew not where. Her muscles were sore from battle and her body weak from the anchor, the residual force of the eluvian caused her more discomfort than she wanted to admit.  


The suddenness of the action left her in a daze, losing her footing for the slightest second causing her to turn swift on her heel. She stared back at the eluvian she crossed through, it seemed none of her companions had followed after her. Revas had no time to ponder the reasons why she had to stay focused.  


When she turned around she was not prepared for what she saw. Shock took over her facial features; her vibrant green eyes looked on in pity, mouth left slightly agape.  


Dozens upon dozens of the Qunari hoard led by the Viddasala stood frozen, encased in stone; lifeless. Many held their battle axes up high about to strike a killing blow from above, they looked strong and fierce but their eyes, their eyes were filled with terror. Each and every face was petrified in stone as they all came to the realisation they would be lost to time, forever to reside within the crossroads, between the mortal plane and the fade.  


Revas had never witnessed such raw power since Adamant. Fear shot up her spine as the blood drained from her cheeks.  
She began towards the furthermost eluvian beyond the steps. She could not let this fearsome display of power deter her from her goal. Revas needed to find Solas, if not to warn him then at least to gain the answers to the many burning questions that pestered her sleepless nights.  


Cautious and slow were her movements as she manoeuvred around the lifeless statues, mindful not to disturb them. Not that it mattered.  
From a distance, Revas heard a familiar calm silvery voice speak in Qunlat.  


"Ebasit kata, itwa ost."  


Eyes wide, her heart picked up its pace. It beat thunderously against her breastplate as she looked to words place of origin, beyond the steps. Revas knew that voice. How could she ever forget such a bewildering voice filled with wisdom and wonder? The voice she would fall asleep listening to. The voice she had craved to hear for the past three years. The voice of the one elf who had ever had the pleasure of stealing her heart. The voice that called her Vhenan in confidence. Her steps quickened into a strained run.  


"Maraas kata!" the Viddasala shouted in disgust.  


More words were exchanged but they were much harder to make out this time around.  
When Revas finally reached the top of the steps she could see the Viddasala, she let out an angered grunt vehemently as she raised her spear prepared to hurl it towards the back turned elf in front of her. That elf was Solas, striding slow and unnerved by the show of force behind him or the presence of his Vhenan.  


_Can he not feel me near?_ Revas lamented to herself  


Before she could dwell on the thought, Revas attempted to pool whatever remained of her severely depleted mana reserves to try and conjure up any magic in an effort to stop the Viddasala.  


_What are you doing?_ Her inner voice chastised _, you barely have enough energy to stand, let alone cast any impactful spells._  


Ignoring her own voice, Revas decided to act on pure instinct alone but before she could cast any spells or even offer a shout of warning, a powerful magic rippled through the air, invisible.  
The fierce female Qunari had befallen the same fate as the rest of her brethren. The Viddasala had turned to stone condemned to be forgotten in this ever-growing cemetery.  
Revas let out a breath in relief and made her way to the retreating figure of her former love.  


"Solas," Revas called out when she was within earshot causing him to stop dead in his tracks. He turned, slowly at the behest of her call.  


Without warning the anchor flared up in a powerful outburst of magic. Revas cried out in pain as the sensation drove her to her knees. The mark flashing violently in its usual green hue.  
Solas walked towards her looking as magnificent and proud as he ever was, if not more. His armour gleamed in the light, accents of gold shone brightly. A wolf pelt slung over one shoulder and fastened in place with a leather strap, it was designed to intimidate more than anything else. Revas noticed how much he resembled Abelas in this moment, only his face had a much deeper sadness to it than the protector of the Well of Sorrows.  


Solas’ eyes turned from their normal violet circled blue to an intense silvery-blue that shimmered like polished diamonds for the briefest moment. If Revas had suffered through a more intense pain she would have assumed she had hallucinated it.  
Suddenly, the striking pain in Revas arm subsided. With the pain gone she could now hold the weight of her own body in her sore limbs again.  


"That should give us more time," Solas spoke, he wore a gentle smile and his eyebrows were upturned with the slight hint of worry, "I suspect you have questions."  


Revas tucked one of her short auburn locks behind her ear, an old nervous reaction when she felt anxious. She had barely been in his presence a couple of minutes and already she felt as naive and young as the first days of the inquisition. She steeled her resolve and looked deep into his eyes, they still had a way of drawing her close, even now when she was moments away from accusing the elf who had her heart of being the Dread Wolf from legend. And so she did.  
Solas, not bothering to conceal his identity any further, revealed all to her. Who he was. The hand he played in giving his orb to Corypheus. The Evanuris. The death of Mythal. His plan to restore Arlathan. He told her everything.  


As they spoke Revas had suffered through various paroxysms of emotions; fear, anger, sadness, betrayal. Her left arm occasionally causing her discomfort as time went by.  
When the issue of the anchor came up Revas was knocked off her feet by a violent pulse of energy from her mark. It flared erratically and much more strongly this time. Yet again she was forced to cry out in pain.  
Solas had confirmed her suspicions: the mark was killing her.  


Knowing that time was short and the moment was fleeting, and in the wake of having to face her mortality, Revas decided to speak from the heart. She feared she would not get a second chance if she stayed passive. She prayed he would hear her pleas, prayed the next words she uttered could change his mind.  


"Solas, var lath vir suledin," she proclaimed, true and honest to the world.  


"I wish it could Vhenan."  


Vhenan, how could he claim her to be his heart when he could so easily leave her behind for a second time?  


Solas' head bent down in submission, his pride no longer strong enough to ward off the obvious hurt her words cultivated. It was as though he had been stripped of his armour and left vulnerable. His brow dropped and creased together, his ears drooping slightly and his eyes appeared more sorrowful than before.  


Revas had seen this look before. It was the same look he gave her in Crestwood. The same look he wore after the battle with Corypheus. It was the look of pure despair. There was a war raging inside him and for all her attempts Revas could do nothing to quell that fight.  


She wanted to reach for him and hold him protectively against her breast. To whisper words of comfort and love into his ear and feel his body relax against hers. But then again Revas seldom got what she wanted and when she did it would always turn for the worse. Always.  


Tears threatened to let loose blurring her vision, pain still ran through her arm unabated. Another cry left her lips.  


Solas bent down carefully, as though he were afraid of her current fragility.  


"My love..." he whispered like a prayer, his breath warm against her cheek. He kissed her then deep and passionate. His soft full lips brushed against hers, caressing her mouth with his tongue ebbing away the pain in her arm. He placed a hand on her cheek and interlinked his free hand with her fingers. The kiss was filled with passion and hunger. Revas closed her eyes in an attempt to savour every aspect of their embrace, tears finally set free as they ran down her face and filled the kiss with the taste of salt. His scent filled the air between them and it made her wish for simpler times. She had almost forgotten what he smelled like, earth and herbs and painting oils.  


Her mind completely overcome by Solas' touch, Revas could feel nothing but numbness in her left arm.  


Sooner than Revas would like, Solas pulled back and broke their contact. He let his forehead touch hers for a few moments longer before he stood up and away from her.  
Revas tried to hold him close, keep him next to her but her arms were like jelly against him.  


"I will never forget you."  


Those words were his last solemn promise to her as he walked away disappearing through the eluvian, leaving her heartbroken for the second time.  
Revas was left to live out the rest of her arduous life alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was simply a quick retelling of the events that transpired in the Trespasser DLC. It mainly served to have a better insight into Revas' mind as a character and what she was feeling. Feedback is always appreciated :)


	3. All I See Is Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revas awakens in a strange yet, familiar place. With no memory as to how or why she came to be there, she must make her way through this uncertain environment on her own. Nothing is as it seems.

Revas lifted her sleep-heavy lids from her eyes to awaken in the middle of a thick forest. She was surrounded by nothing but green and the playful wisps of dew hovering above head. It was an eerily familiar yet strange place. Even so, despite not knowing where or how she came to be there, she wasn't at all afraid. 

She looked up towards the sky in search of the luminous giants that made their home amongst the stars only to find the sky bare and dark. Yet hints of colour permeated through the thick canopies of the evergreens.

 _‘It must be dusk soon,’_ she thought to herself.

As she gazed around the lush greenery a silhouette of a strange shape caught her eye. If not for her keen elven senses she may not have been able to make out that dark figure in the poorly illuminated woods. 

An echo of inaudible noise originating from the canopies above made her absentmindedly shift her focus. There was nothing there. Had she imagined the sound? When she brought her head back towards the place she saw the silhouette it was gone. Suddenly, Revas felt panicked, as though she had lost something important only she couldn't remember what it was.

On bare feet, she meandered through the untrailed terrain with a desperate quality to her movements. She began to chase after that figure from the dark. The longer she spent traversing through the woods the more familiar it felt. It was almost as though the longer she spent in them the more they began to reveal their secrets. Secrets that for some obscured reason she subconsciously knew, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember.

Soon enough she had grown accustomed to the environment around her and began to notice characteristics she had overlooked when she first began wandering after the silhouette. The scent of the air was accented by hints of a familiar flower. The smell caused her body to feel multiple sensations as though it were a key to some hidden vault of past familiarities in her mind. It was like her senses had been overwhelmed by past encounters. She could hear the faint chime of Shemlen church bells; the sound of different women chanting the same prayer; the odour of poultices and salves; a statue of Andrasté basked in sunlight, wearing a wreath of glossy dark bladed leaves; red berries coming to fruition in the gardens of Skyhold. Prophets Laurel. 

As the image of the flower was slowly constructed in her mind the very flower began to materialise out of the ground, growing outward in the form of a path. It stretched out before her like a red stained carpet as the berries took shape, covering the green mossy soil like an ocean of red marbles.

The path kept stretching further ahead, painting all the greenery red. Now the densely packed forest had a clear trail leading into a place unknown. For some unknown reason, Revas knew the path would lead her towards the silhouetted figure she saw in the darkness, so she ventured forward unsure of what awaited her in front.

The soles of her feet slowly stained red by the crushed berries beneath them. To someone in passing it might seem as though she had walked until her feet bled. The starkly graphic sight reminded her of a time in her childhood when she had gone chasing after a fox and accidentally cut her feet on a sharp edge of a rock hidden beneath the cover of moss. Deshanna had told her that the only reason the clan hunters had found her was that of the trail of blood she left from her foolhardy adventuring. She laughed at the memory of her childish curiosity, but more to the fact that she never outgrew it.

_‘Still chasing after strange creatures in dark forests?’_

Revas walked for what felt like an eternity, the path kept stretching forward without an end in sight. 

_‘At this rate, I may just walk off the face of Thedas.’_

In frustration, she decided to stop blindly following the lost figure and turn back. To her disbelief, there was nothing but dense wood behind her. No path of Prophets Laurel. No crushed berries. No red that stained the green. The trees were now too close together to try and manoeuvre through, instead, there was now a wall of trunks and roots fused together preventing her from trekking back. She sighed in frustration.

_‘Onwards it is.’_

As she continued through she spotted the figure from before. It was more pronounced than before. It looked animalistic. Four legs. Drooping ears. A long snout. A downturned tail. 

Was it the very fox she had once chased headfirst into unknown terrain as a child?

 _‘No,’_ she thought to herself, _‘it’s too large to be a fox.’_

Revas crept closer, keeping in mind to stay as silent as the night itself in fear of the animal being scared off by the rustling sound of footsteps.  
The animal appeared to be too busy to notice her footsteps as it gazed towards something out beyond the border of the woods. As she got closer the figure revealed itself to be a wolf, its size impressive yet svelte and its dark hairs greying. 

In that moment her heart sank as a dull ache began to brew between her heartbeats. A harrowing thought crossed her mind.

_‘Could it be…him?’_

Just as soon as she was within arm's length of the wolf she heard the sound of warm laughter emanate from where the wolf fixed his gaze. When Revas looked up she was slightly taken aback by what she saw.

By the edge of the border was a large rock formation. The rocks formed an enclosure around a pool of water that reflected the glimmers of light from the protruding veins of Lyrium crystals. On either side of the pool of water stood erected: two large Halla statures. Snaking around their stone carved antlers were vines of Crystal Grace. Further inwards a rush of water collided violently with the still waters below. The sound of the violent collision, however, was dampened out as though that was part of an almost forgotten dream that was slowly fading away. The scene before her was so bewilderingly beautiful and like a seaman to a sirens song she was impulsively drawn further in, still in search of the source of that laugh. Everything around her looked like a varnished painting, vibrant and glossy, of a romanticised memory. 

_‘Is this a memory?’_

The seductive laughter filled the silence of the cave again and Revas scanned the scene vigorously. Situated in the centre of the pool of water were two elves. Their naked bodies were half submerged in water, the other half peppered by shimmering droplets that sprayed from the waterfall. They lovingly embraced one another. 

The she-elf spun out of her lover’s arms, her back turned towards him as his lean frame blanketed itself around her. His arms wrapped comfortably around her belly and his face obscured behind her neck. His skin the colour of rich almond. The face of the young she-elf stole the air from Revas’ lungs.

It was her. 

Having lost track of the wolf from before, she didn’t have ample time to react when it pounced at her younger self and her lover. The last thing she saw was a bloody jaw and six red eyes.

***

A loud gasp filled the Inquisitor’s room as she awoke in a panicked state. Her body felt cold to the touch despite the warm blankets shielding her from the night’s air. Her breathing was ragged and uneven, her left fist clenched tightly on the flimsy chiffon material of her night gown.

“It was just a dream…” she croaked out in a hoarse voice.

But it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like something else. Something more powerful. 

_‘It felt like magic.’_

Revas glanced out her frost glazed windows. Noting it was probably still the middle of the night she made sure to make a mental note to ask someone more knowledgeable in interpreting dreams. Perhaps Dorian or the less approachable Rift Mage from the Collective would be able to help her understand if what she just experienced was indeed something more than a simple dream. For tonight Revas, would have to try and find something to occupy her mind until the sun rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took longer to post than originally thought (mainly because this was not originally the second chapter of the fic and was added later) exam week has been more time consuming then I'd like. Overall I wasn't completely happy with how this turned out, I think it's because of the perfectionist in me. But, as always criticism is gladly accepted. Hopefully, I can start posting on a weekly basis. This chapter may be a bit confusing but fret not, a lot will be explained in the next chapter.


End file.
